The Town Below. Roger Lemelin
Between himself and reality he interposed these sentimental barricades behind which he entrenched himself in a beribboned virtue. This man, so self-satisfied, brooded upon his tastes and did not like to discuss them; any objection raised would have wearied him, and so he cherished them in silence. He was, then, in turn a solitary intellectual, an unknown musician, and a voluntary hermit among men and saints. He loved the countryside and by way of procuring rides cultivated the friendship of those among the Soyeux who had automobiles. The drama of his life occurred when he mounted the pulpit; for the Abbé Charton had a deep and solemn voice and Monsieur le Curé always assigned to him those sermons that called for a bit of pathos.
When the good priest who was also a poet felt the first murmurous titillations of an intellectual ecstasy coming on, he would flee to the silence of his room and devote himself avidly to science, literature, and music. In a fever of inspiration, he would rumple his hair, undo his collar, cast a befuddled eye over the volumes in his library, run a hand over his dusty phonograph records, snatch up his pen and bite it spasmodically, and pace the floor impatiently with a hammering tread. But all this would suddenly cease as the grating voice of Abbé Trinchu cut short his poetic fit.
“Not so much noise, Charton!” the other priest would call from the floor below.
His arms would fall to his side, and it was then that he would go out into the street, armed with his adhesive tape. Thus his life was spent between the parish house and the public thoroughfare, between the convulsions of a sterile beauty and the injured children of fecund mothers.
The Abbé Charton who was studying the Langevins and wondering what they could have been doing at Lise’s house a short while ago, now became aware of Gaston’s presence and told him to stay. The invalid, however, was anxious to leave. The priest for some time had been bothering him about taking the measure of his deformity; for the Abbé had in mind inventing a brace that would enable him to walk upright, and the poor fellow did not wish to show the holes in his back. His brother provided a distraction.
“Come along, Gaston,” said Denis, who did not care to be bandaged. He darted Tit-Blanc a contemptuous look: “Mulot! You have milk in your veins.”
Once outside, Gaston was jubilant: “You gave the swine a thrashing, eh?” Then he made a face: “Ugh! That’s some father Germaine has!”
Denis shrugged his shoulders. He was gazing absent-mindedly at the sheet-iron plaques that stood out front from the houses like ears that had come loose. There were inscriptions in black on white or vice versa, all of them the same but displaying every mistake in spelling which the French language permitted: “vers de paiche,” “vairs de pêches,” “verres de peiche,” et cetera, all of them signifying angleworms. To a schoolmaster’s eyes Jean was an educated lad, for the spelling on his sign was correct. He sold them at twenty-five cents a hundred, and although he was a city dweller he would wait for a rain with as much anxiety as any farmer. But what competition he had! It came from the small Mulots exploited by Chaton, who was bent upon monopolizing the business — the Abbé Bongrain did not hesitate to call him the “worm magnate,” which flattered his self-esteem. Chaton bought the little animals at five cents a hundred and sold them at a profit of ten cents. But he was no-good and a natural-born ignoramus, whereas Jean knew how to fatten them up. How red they were, those that he had, and how cleverly they could slip through the fingers of the clumsy fisherman!
There was a small group of vendors who were in the habit of gathering the worms of an evening in the Parc des Braves, after a rain; and the lovers upon the benches, between kisses, would rail at these imbeciles, whom they at first mistook for members of the morals squad.
Denis disdained this vulgar traffic, but he was none the less keenly aware of the constant lack of small change in his pocket. An anxiety clutched his heart: “Shall I have money one day without becoming like them?” He listened to his mother singing in a loud voice, “La Légende des Flots Bleus” and then went back to his reverie. At bottom he was glad that his friends did not have his powers of resistance where women were concerned. He thought of the entertainment that evening, what it would be like. Who was this Lise? He began laying his plans to get hold of fifteen cents.
“Father!” exclaimed Gaston. Joseph Boucher was making signs to his son, good-naturedly tapping the extended pockets of his coat. As men came home from work the Jewish peddlers were to be seen decamping from the houses with their merchandise, for it was only with the womenfolk that they bargained effectively. Denis was gazing toward the Upper Town, picturing to himself a gang so powerful that he would have to exert all his strength to remain the leader. But Jean would follow him, he could depend on that.
Chapter Two
When the elder Boucher had finished emptying his pockets of the grain he had brought back from the elevators, he came into the house and washed himself thoroughly, taking pains not to leave any of the dust behind his ears. Denis kept hanging around him. What was the use of asking his father for money? He would only start making a speech about how they had worked their fingers to the bone to put him through school. The youth clenched his fists, and when he spoke it was in a sharp tone of voice, for it humiliated him to be intimidated like this.
“I’d like to go to the entertainment tonight.”
“That’s your business.”
“I need fifteen cents. I’ll give it back to you.”
“No loans. We give you twenty-five cents for Sunday, that’s enough! Look at your brother; he knows how to get it. Stay at home with him and amuse him.”
Gaston protested, but still he had a vision of Denis reading him the illustrated stories in the newspaper. Flora Boucher did not like Denis to go to these affairs, for she sat in the reserved seats next to the churchwardens and people looked at her when her son created a disturbance. She now put in a word, her hands upon her hips.
“Joseph,” she began, “do you know what he did this afternoon?”
Taking the offensive, Denis came back at her: “It’s all on account of Noré,” he said. And he went on to mimic his mother, whom he had overheard reminding the gendarme of their past: “Ah! Those were the days! Do you remember when we went cherry picking?”
Flora turned pale, but disconcerted as she was, she did not fail to note the arrival of the Abbé Charton, who appeared as a kind of Providence. “Monsieur l’Abbé!”
“Dear Madame Boucher! And how are you?”
“Thanks to the good Lord, my family and I are all well. Did you find the canvas for my son’s brace?”
Joseph Boucher went out to give the hens some grain, and Denis had a sudden idea. To go to the cupboard and take three empty milk jars and stuff them in his shirt was the work of a moment. Then whistling nonchalantly, he made for the door. The Abbé Charton, a charming smile on his lips, greeted him cordially, for Denis possessed a fine bass voice and was a possible recruit for the choir at high mass. When the young man saw that he was no longer being noticed, he ran out and hastened to Bédarovitch’s place.
The junk dealer was occupied with unharnessing his decrepit horse, which he called his “old nag.” The poor beast was so skinny that one had the impression that the shafts served him as a pair of crutches. The cart, perched upon its limping wheels, was of a pale yellow hue, as if someone had endeavoured unsuccessfully to give it a coating of gilt. It was overflowing with bits of copper wire, old rags, bottles, and old bedsprings. It was, in short, a catchall for objects worth nothing to anyone save to the Jews of the ghetto. The only thing was, could one definitely assert that Bédarovitch was a Jew? There were all sorts of arguments pro and con. For example, his sunburned skin afforded no clue, for his was not the olive-brown complexion of the Oriental. Moreover, Jean-Baptiste did not have a long beard to twist in his right hand in the manner of his pseudo-ancestors. Semitic or not, he had one characteristic mannerism: while he was talking to you he would clack his false teeth with every sentence. This was not a whim on his part, as he tried to make it appear, but was due to the fact that his plate was not one made to order; the explanation was simple enough: he had found it in the dust-bin of Monsieur Folbèche, the